The garden where the boat had docked, the Jardin de Mon Repos, was filling with more and more women in green dresses. They poured in like locusts, the kind that strip whole villages down to their posts and their bones. Shoulder to shoulder, they jostled for space on the walking paths, they overflowed the benches. In the Musée d’Histoire des Sciences, I could see them peering out of each one of the windows, some held tiny pairs of binoculars up to their eyes.

They ate ice cream from glass dishes at the vine-covered tables of the restaurant La Perle du Lac. They licked their spoons. They scraped the bottoms of the dishes. Waiters in green dresses weaved in among the tables carrying trays of espresso and pastis. One of the waiters dropped her tray and the women at the surrounding tables pounced on her like jackals, putting her tray back together or ripping her apart.

At the Jardin Botanique women in green dresses filled the glass greenhouses. They steamed up the panelling with their almond breath. Some women in green dresses were planting flowers and more women in green dresses hung high up in the trees like unripe fruit, motionless, except for some that checked their phones.

The reflecting pools were clogged with women in green dresses floating mildly on their backs and other women in green dresses stood at the sides of the pools holding long-handled nets, trying to fish them out. At the Place des Nations, women in green dresses ran back and forth in the fountain, laughing as the shooting jets of water rained down on them, plastering their backs with dark green silk. Women in green dresses climbed the statues and sat sunning themselves demurely on the concrete benches, their hands resting beautifully just beneath their throats.

I ran out to the street, which is to say I ran almost into it, right as the number fifteen tram pulled up to the stop. The driver bleated his horn at me and I fell back onto the platform gasping. I turned back to the fountains but found them empty, the women in green dresses had vanished or become leaves, hanging so lush and green and glinting from all the cernuous trees. My breath was ragged and a man asked me if I was all right and I had the urge to, really suddenly found I almost couldn’t not, spit at him, my mouth pooled with drool and murk, but I only smiled and nodded and wiped savagely at the corners of my lips. I grabbed up all my bags and hurried away from the park almost running for the station where I could catch a tram that would take me back to the apartment.

A couple of women in green dresses hid sulkily behind the dingy apartment windows overlooking the street. Further down, toward the lake a woman in a green dress pushed a cleaning trolley in front of her but no one seemed to notice. It seemed possible that my eyes had specks in them or were haunted.